The global economy will confront serious challenges in the months and years ahead, and looming in the background is a mountain of debt that makes markets nervous—and that thus increases the system's vulnerability to destabilizing shocks. Yet the baseline scenario seems to be one of continuity, with no obvious convulsions on the horizon.

Senior Advisor, ClearView Energy Partners; Former Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Economic Policy, National Economic Council; Former David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment, Council on Foreign Relations